Home
(English) : Accueil (Français)
Hugues Bedouelle - Biography
Biochemist, Mathematician, Musician
Hugues
Bedouelle is currently "Invited Researcher" at Institut Pasteur and retired from the
French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Previously, he was Director of
Research (1st class) at CNRS and director of
the Associated Research Unit URA3012, entitled "Hosts, vectors and
infectious agents: biology and dynamics", between Institut Pasteur and
CNRS.
His
research was centered on protein engineering, especially of antibodies,
proteins from infectious agents, and their receptors; with applications
in the fields of biosensors, therapeutic molecules and diagnostic
reagents. He was working actively on protein stability.
Since his retirement, Hugues Bedouelle has undertaken an activity
of musical composition. He has writen and recorded about twenty works
of chamber music and published several articles at the interface
between mathematics and music.
University studies
Hugues
Bedouelle studied at Université Paris Cité. He obtained his graduation
(license) in mathematics in 1970, completed his first year of Master's
degree (maîtrise) in mathematics in 1971, and started his second year
of Master's degree in Category Theory under the supervision of
Professor
Charles
Ehresmann (1). However, he provisionaly
suspended his university
studies during that year to concentrate on engineering studies
(see
below). Later, he undertook university studies in biology, first by
attending the General Microbiology Course of Institut Pasteur in
fall 1977, and then by preparing a doctoral thesis in Maurice Hofnung's
laboratory at
Institut Pasteur. He defended his thesis in 1983 on the export of
proteins accross membranes and the regulation of maltose uptake in
bacteria (2),
and thus obtained a State Doctorate in Natural Sciences (equivalent to
an Habilitation). During summer 1980, he spent a few months in
Martin Rosenberg's group at the National Cancer Institute, National
Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland (USA), in the frame of a
collaboration.
Grandes Ecoles
Hugues
Bedouelle also followed studies in engineering sciences in several
French "Grandes Ecoles". He studied at the Ecole Centrale de Paris
between 1969 and 1971, and graduated in 1975. He entered the Ecole
Polytechnique in 1971 and graduated in 1974. He then completed his
engineering studies at the Ecole des Mines de Paris,
with courses on law,
management and public administration, in 1974-1977, and obtained his
diploma of "Ingenieur au Corps des Mines". During his years at the
Ecole Polytechnique, Hugues Bedouelle was delegate of the students to
the Department of Mathematics, then headed by Laurent
Schwartz, and to
the Teaching Council (3) During his years at the
Ecole des Mines, he
worked on environmental problems and in particular on the decrees of
application of the first French law on environment.
Post-doctoral studies
In
1984-1986, Hugues Bedouelle obtained an EMBO fellowship and then a
Royal Society
fellowship to join Greg Winter's
group, which
belonged to the Division of Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry, headed
by Cesar
Milstein, at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology
of the
Medical Research Council in Cambridge (UK). There, he used the recent
methods of protein engineering to study the molecular recognitions
between tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase and its cognate transfer-RNA (4).
Direction of laboratories
Hugues
Bedouelle came back at Institut Pasteur in 1986, where he founded
a group of Protein Engineering. In 2000, he gathered colleagues who
were working in the field of structural biology and scattered in
several research departments of Institut Pasteur, and created the
Associated Research Unit URA2185, entitled "Structural biology and
infectious agents", between Institut Pasteur and CNRS (5).
He was director
of this unit between 2000-2003. In 2005, he gathered colleagues who
were
working at the interface between environment and infectious agents, and
created the Associated Research Unit URA3012 between Institut Pasteur
and CNRS, entitled "Hosts, vectors and infectious agents: biology and
dynamics" (6). He has been director of this last
unit between 2005 and 2014.
Employments
In
1974, Hugues Bedouelle integrated the Corps
of Mines, a Grand Corps of the French State which is attached to the French Ministry of Economy and Finance. He was
successively Ingénieur des Mines (1976), and then Ingénieur-en-chef des
Mines (1983-1989). He integrated CNRS as attaché de recherche (1982),
then became chargé de recherche (1983) and directeur de recherche
(1989). He has been consultant for biotechnology at IFP -
Energies Nouvelles between 1983-2012, and adviser of its Scientific
Direction between 2000-2012.
Science and private life
In
1995, Hugues Bedouelle married Shamila Nair-Bedouelle, who is Director
of Research (1st class) at the French National Institute for Health and Medical
Research (INSERM) and elected member of
the South-African Academy of Sciences. She has been director and head of the OzonAction at the UN Environment Programme (Dec. 2012 - March 2019) and Assistant Director General for the Natural Sciences at UNESCO (April 2019 - April 2023).
Notes
(1)
During my studies in mathematics at University Paris 7, I attended the
following courses and passed with good
to very good marks in most (6/8) cases.
3rd year: Elementary topology (Prof. Michel Zisman), Modern theory of
integration (Michel Hervé), Algebra (Paul Dubreil), Differential geometry (Marcel Berger). 4th year: Algebraic topology (Charles
Ehresmann), Topological vector spaces (Pierre Lelong), Fiber bundles
(Charles Ehresmann). 5th year: General theory of structured categories
(Charles Ehresmann). At the Ecole Polytechnique, I especially remember
the courses of Laurent Schwartz, Jacques Neveu and Max Karoubi. All
these professors were mathematicians of great renown!
(2)
The jury was composed of Jean-Paul Aubert, Sylvain Blanquet, Maurice
Hofnung, Joël Janin, Jean-Claude Patte and Agnès Ullmann.
(3) For an account on life at Ecole Polytechnique
in 1971-74, see:
Laurent Schwartz
(1997) Un mathématicien aux prises avec le siècle. Editions Odile
Jacob, Paris, p. 350. ISBN 2.7381.0462.2.
Laurent Schwartz
(2001) A mathematician grappling with his century, Birkhäuser Verlag,
Basel, Chapter VII. ISBN 3.7643.6052.6
(4) For an account on research and scientists in the
PNAC division of the MRC-LMB in 1984-86, see:
John
Finch (2008) A Nobel fellow on every floor. Published by the Laboratory
of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council. pp. 209-252. ISBN
978-1840469-40-0.
(5) The
initial teams of URA2185 in 2000 were those of Pedro M. Alzari,
Octavian Barzu, Hugues Bedouelle, Graham A. Bentley, Muriel Delepierre,
Michel E. Goldberg and Daniel Ladant. Michel Véron and his team joined
URA2185 in 2003. Muriel Delepierre replaced me as director of URA2185
from 2004.
(6) This associated research unit was initially created in 2005 as a
provisional structure, FRE2849, with the teams of Paul T. Brey,
Françoise Dromer, Nicole Guiso and Paul Reiter. It was then renewed in
2007 as URA3012 with the teams of Charles Roth (replacing Paul Brey who
had left Paris to create the Institut Pasteur of Laos), Françoise
Dromer, Nicole Guiso, Lluis Quintana-Murci and Paul Reiter. Later,
Kenneth D. Vernick and his team joined URA3012 in 2008, Anavaj
Sakuntabhai and his team in 2013.